A thoughtful essay from novelist John Updike appears in my AARP magazine this month. For those of you too young to find the world’s largest circulation publication in your mailboxes, you can read it here.
Updike observes, as an oft-published and lauded literary legend, that he is now of the age of confronting his greatest rival: his younger, nimbler self. “No mercy is extended by reviewers” but he also observes that likewise, none is extended to the rookie writer, either.
Updike, with deft command that defies the point, declares:
“With ominous frequency, I can’t think of the right word. I know there is a word; I can visualize the exact shape it occupies in the jigsaw puzzle of the English language. But the word itself, with its precise edges and unique tint of meaning, hangs on the misty rim of consciousness. Eventually, with shamefaced recourse to my well-thumbed thesaurus or to a germane encyclopedia article, I may pin the word down, only to discover it unfortunately rhymes with the adjoining word of the sentence. Meanwhile, I have lost the rhythm and syntax of the thought I was shaping up, and the paragraph has skidded off (like this one) in an unforeseen direction.”
Regardless, Updike retains the “giddy bliss” of creation and that his newest book, may also be the best.
Oh gosh! I am so with him–not even when writing the “next great American novel,” but just trying to write a concise and sensical email!